a stranger here myself

I forgot to include John Scalzi in my Hugo congratulations!  And of course I'm extremely proud of him too; it's just that Scalzi has had such a steady stream of good news to kvell over lately that another Hugo nomination almost gets lost in the flood.  But congratulations, bubbeleh; it's well deserved.

And happy birthday week to Jed!  Long may you celebrate.

Meanwhile on the homefront, Jeremiah is sick with a stomach flu, poor little guy.  He did the up-all-night-puking thing on Tuesday, then spent most of yesterday sleeping off a fever.  I knew he was truly sick when he turned down ice cream.  We suggested Children's Tylenol to bring down the fever, but he declined it, which was probably a good choice; he was running hot but not scary-hot, just enough to make him doze in bed a lot.  As Pär put it: Nature's way of making sure he doesn't spend all day playing Warcraft.  He's incredibly sweet when he's sick, except for the puke breath. 

I'm hoping he'll be well enough to return to school tomorrow, in time to perform in his school play.  It's a Western play, called "Stagecoach" (probably not based on the John Wayne/Claire Trevor movie about murderers, prostitutes, drunkards and thieves, though that would surely make for a lively kindergarden show).  J's been practicing his favorite line for weeks: "Giddyup, you ornery critters!"  It's hilarious to hear a six year old channel Gabby Hayes.

Or actually, boy. Well, really boys. Because Benjamin Rosenbaum's story "The House Beyond Your Sky", published in Strange Horizons, is up for a Hugo award!  Hooray for Ben! This is the first time a Strange Horizons story has been a finalist on the Hugo ballot; it's an honor, and we're all very happy about it.

But I must cheer for boys-plural not only because 48 out of 55 finalists are male (hello) but because my darlin' Tim Pratt is also on the short story ballot.  First time he's up for a Hugo, I think?  Though not, I suspect, the last.  Anyway: you go, boys!  I'm so proud of you both.

Hooray for Theodora Goss, whose Strange Horizons story "Pip and the Fairies" is on the final Nebula Award ballot!  This is the third story we've published that's made it onto the final ballot (the previous being Tim Pratt's "Little Gods" and Greg Van Eekhout's "In The Late December"), so we're extremely pleased and proud.

And congratulations to all the other Nebula and Norton finalists!  Looks like a terrific lineup this year.  I'm kvelling for all of you, bubbelehs.

This seems as good a moment as any to quote something Dora wrote in her journal a couple months back:

"The difference between the writer and the critic is that the critic is concerned with large things, like The Conflict Between Desire and Faith, The Place of the Intellectual in Our Century, and The Consequences of Totalitarianism on the Human Soul, while the writer is concerned with small things, like how one particular woman held up her hand to wave goodbye, or how the sea looked from a particular dune on a summer morning, or what a father said to his son and whether it was true, and why not. What a prisoner imagined in the minute before his death, or what breakfast smelled like in a kitchen in southern Virginia, half a century ago.

For the critic, a flower is a symbol. For the writer, a flower is a flower."